Favelas
Water supply and sanitation in Brazil is characterized
by both achievements and challenges. Among the challenges is the still high number of poor Brazilians living in the city's informal settlements, called favelas and
in rural areas without access to piped water or sanitation.
A favela (or slum) is a public field near a big city in which migrants and poor people have settled. A very high intensity of them live in
house that they make themselves with what they can find. They also have to build their own sanitation services and they often connected themselves to the city’s drinkable water organization.
We can point out two different problems: access to drinkable water and sanitation.
SANITATION
Inadequate sanitation options lead to illness, environmental damage and reduced quality of life. 85% of the urban population (87% of the total population) has access to improved sanitation. In the favelas, where the evacuation system does not allow all the used water to be evacuated, only 67.3% of the population does.
In Rio’s favelas, sanitation issues are mainly due to resident who have to throw trash in the streets, usually in the gutters and drainages of the communities because there often is only one pick-up point for the entire community. The sewage system is unsafe and inefficient. Given that the communities are all located on Rio's hillsides, the trash washes down during rains and clogs the sewage and city drainage systems and eventually washes into the Rio watershed. Since many favelas do not connect to the city sewage system,
open sewage can enter watersheds through rivers that run through the favelas.
Children often swim and play in the polluted rivers, which puts them at risk for diarrhea and other waterborne diseases such as leptospirosis and a variety of skin conditions. Furthermore, canals built by the habitants are often open in surface, which leads to overflows when it rains.
WATER SUPPLY
Clean drinking water...not self-evident for everyone.
A favela (or slum) is a public field near a big city in which migrants and poor people have settled. A very high intensity of them live in
house that they make themselves with what they can find. They also have to build their own sanitation services and they often connected themselves to the city’s drinkable water organization.
We can point out two different problems: access to drinkable water and sanitation.
SANITATION
Inadequate sanitation options lead to illness, environmental damage and reduced quality of life. 85% of the urban population (87% of the total population) has access to improved sanitation. In the favelas, where the evacuation system does not allow all the used water to be evacuated, only 67.3% of the population does.
In Rio’s favelas, sanitation issues are mainly due to resident who have to throw trash in the streets, usually in the gutters and drainages of the communities because there often is only one pick-up point for the entire community. The sewage system is unsafe and inefficient. Given that the communities are all located on Rio's hillsides, the trash washes down during rains and clogs the sewage and city drainage systems and eventually washes into the Rio watershed. Since many favelas do not connect to the city sewage system,
open sewage can enter watersheds through rivers that run through the favelas.
Children often swim and play in the polluted rivers, which puts them at risk for diarrhea and other waterborne diseases such as leptospirosis and a variety of skin conditions. Furthermore, canals built by the habitants are often open in surface, which leads to overflows when it rains.
WATER SUPPLY
Clean drinking water...not self-evident for everyone.
96% of the urban population has access to piped water on premises, only 88.3% on the favelas. There’s usually only homemade water supply and sewer system. In a favela, the water is said to be drinkable. However, drinking it makes people sick (amoebiasis,typhoid fever, hepatitis, etc). There only are a few favelas in which you can pay bills and access regulated water.
The National Water Supply and Sanitation Policy, approved by the Council of Cities, has identified six steps to improve service coverage and efficiency by encouraging a more competitive and better regulated environment: the institutional separation of service providers and service regulators: promotion of different decentralized alternatives for service provision, promotion of social participation in service regulation and control, use of low-cost technologies, development of financially sustainable pricing schemes which include subsidies for low-income families where required to assure universal access to basic services, and greater cooperation between federal and local authorities and civil society.
The National Water Supply and Sanitation Policy, approved by the Council of Cities, has identified six steps to improve service coverage and efficiency by encouraging a more competitive and better regulated environment: the institutional separation of service providers and service regulators: promotion of different decentralized alternatives for service provision, promotion of social participation in service regulation and control, use of low-cost technologies, development of financially sustainable pricing schemes which include subsidies for low-income families where required to assure universal access to basic services, and greater cooperation between federal and local authorities and civil society.